He was boxed in.
He got out of the car, shaking the pins and needles from his legs.
The front door of the lighted cottage opened. He stiffened. Maybe he’d be met with a shotgun blast. Like his diggers. Maybe this was how it ended.
She was dressed for a party with a festive blouse showing cleavage and a clingy black skirt, tight to mid-calf, almost vampy. She looked like she’d spent a lot of time on her make-up. Her lips were very red, aiming for luscious.
‘Hello, Luc,’ she said. ‘You’re on time.’ She was purring and friendly, as if he was expected for dinner.
He felt a deep queasiness, the kind that ripples through the gut when the first wave of flu hits home.
He forced himself to talk and the words came out strained and dry. ‘Hello, Odile.’
THIRTY-THREE
Friday, Midnight
Her sitting-room cushions had absorbed decades of fireplace and cigarette residue. Above that smoky staleness Odile’s own sweet perfume hung heavily in the air.
They were alone. She gestured towards a wing chair by the front window. It was upholstered in damask with pink roses and green thorny stems, old-fashioned, like everything in the room. Luc half-expected a grandmother to dodder in on a cane.
‘Where’s Sara?’
‘Please sit. Would you like a drink?’
He stood his ground, arms folded. ‘I want to see Sara.’
‘You will, believe me. But we need to talk first.’
‘Is she safe?’
‘Yes. Will you sit?’
He acquiesced, his posture rigid, a stony anger on his face.
‘Now, a drink?’ she asked.
‘No, nothing.’
She sighed and sat across from him on the matching sofa. She pressed her legs together and lit a cigarette. ‘You don’t want one do you? I’ve never seen you smoke.’
He ignored her.
She dragged deeply. ‘It’s a terrible habit, but it’s done me no harm as far as I can tell.’
‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘It’s Sara I’m interested in, not you.’
If she was stung, she didn’t show it. ‘I want to talk about Hugo.’
What did she want, he thought. Absolution? ‘It wasn’t an accident, was it?’
She fiddled with her cigarette. ‘It was an accident.’
‘But he didn’t die in his car.’
Her black eyebrows arched in sharp surprise. ‘How did you know?’
‘Because he took a photo with his mobile after he was supposedly dead.’
‘What photo?’
‘A painting.’
‘Ah.’ She exhaled a cloud of smoke that obscured her face for a moment. ‘When you get involved with this kind of thing there are so many details. It’s too easy to miss one or two.’
‘Is that what Hugo was? A detail?’
‘No! I liked him. I really fancied the man.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘He came here, unexpectedly. He let himself in. He was about to see things he shouldn’t have seen. Jacques hit him. Too hard. He hit him too hard – that was the accident. I liked him. We could have had a good time together, a few laughs, maybe more. I had hopes.’
‘So you put him back in his car and ran it into a tree.’
‘Yes, of course. Not me, the men.’
‘You murdered my friend.’
She let the words slide off. ‘He didn’t suffer, you know. If you’re going to go, that’s the best way. Cleanly, without pain. I really did like him, Luc. I’m sorry he’s dead.’
Luc reached into his jeans pocket. She closely followed his hand perhaps expecting a knife or a gun. It was a piece of paper, a Xerox. He unfolded it and smoothed it on his knee, then half rose to hand it to her.
She stubbed out her cigarette and studied it carefully, her eye roaming from person to person, soaking up each image, seemingly lost in memories.
‘She looks a lot like you,’ Luc said pointedly, bringing her back.
She smiled. ‘Look how tall de Gaulle was! What a man. He kissed me three times. I can still feel his lips. They were hard.’
Luc leaned forward. ‘Okay, let’s stop playing. How old are you?’
Her response was to light another cigarette and to watch the curling smoke rise to the beamed ceiling. ‘You, know, by years, I’m not so young. But age is how you feel. I feel young. Isn’t that what counts?’
He asked again. ‘How old are you, Odile?’
‘Luc, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything you want to know. That’s why you’re here. To make you understand. We’ve done some bad things, but out of necessity. I’m not a monster. It’s important for you to see that. We’ve done great things for France. We’re patriots. We deserve to be left in peace.’
She began to ramble, chain-smoking and talking in spurts. After a while, she offered him a drink again and this time he accepted, numbly following her into the kitchen partly as a way to satisfy himself they were still alone. She didn’t object. Over the kitchen table there was a large clean rectangle, where something had hung on the wall for a long time. She caught him staring at the blank space but offered no explanation. She simply poured two brandies, took the bottle with her and led him back to the sitting room. Back in the wing chair he kept up his guard and started on the drink only after she drank hers first.
Before she was done talking, he’d allowed his glass to be refilled.
Her first strong childhood memory, the earliest one that really stuck, was toddling into her father’s cafe from the living quarters above.
The stairs connected the kitchen of their flat to the kitchen of the cafe. She always remembered the magical feeling of having two kitchens because it made her feel special. None of the other children in Ruac had two kitchens.
She was upstairs in her bedroom playing with a family of rag dolls when she heard two sharp bangs that frightened but also beckoned her. She was a sprig of a girl, a little black-haired beauty, and none of the men spotted her in their midst before she’d spent a fair amount of time mutely studying the scene.
She’d seen many dead animals, butchered animals, even put-down old horses with their brains blown out. So she approached the bloody sight on the cafe floor more with curiosity than revulsion.
She was mainly drawn to the young blond man, whose face was untouched owing to the trajectory of the bullet. His eyes were open and still glistening blue, retaining the last vestiges of life. They were friendly eyes. He had a kind face. She would have liked to play with him. The other man looked old and rough, like the men in the village and besides, his face was grotesque with a nasty exit wound through the eye socket.
Her father saw her first. ‘Odile! Get the hell out of here!’
She stayed put, staring.
Bonnet rushed forward and scooped her up with his thick arms and calloused hands and carried her up the stairs. She remembered the way his pomaded black hair smelled and the curve of his long black sideburns. He threw her down on her bed, slapped her hip with the back of his hand hard enough to hurt and called for his wife to take charge of her.
It was 1899. She was four years old.
She remembered being taken to visit the cave soon after the strangers were shot. Her father and some of the
